


Catch 22

by callmeflo



Series: a Mage's Bane [7]
Category: Moren-Ezen
Genre: Gen, Mage Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:55:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21664321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmeflo/pseuds/callmeflo
Summary: Maybe it was just one too many slip ups.
Series: a Mage's Bane [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533155





	1. Catch 22

_March 25th_

_To be honest I can’t believe I lasted this long with it still a secret, but any sense of safety is now long gone. At least I’ve managed to learn enough about this Astrology magic that I can use it well and confidently now, as it will be very useful to my continued existence in the coming months._

_The knowledge the cosmos gives me becomes more detailed each time, down to hearing the tense whispers of the other scouts before I left to check in with them yesterday predawn. I’d noticed the quick, uneasy glances every so often lately, but only the stars’ warning saved me from walking into the yurt for an explanation and likely never leaving it again._

_Maybe it was just one too many slip ups, where I’d had to pass off knowing the approaching weather as “just a feeling”. It’s hard to know what’s coming and not act on it - perhaps suggesting that the shepherds to the south should stable their pregnant cattle for the night was overkill, but in the end it saved the newborns from the unexpectedly hard frost, as I knew it would. And that’s only one example._

_I should’ve been more careful. Or I should’ve cared less._

_Madsie is wounded and gone._

✧

As much as they call Haspar a city, it’s nothing compared to the cities from before the Cataclysm. They call it so in their delusions of grandeur, perhaps, proud that they’ve brought together this group of civilised people to live together and trade together, no longer foraging in the wilds like stray dogs.

Everyone knows everyone. Everyone is fed fruits and vegetables by the same farming families, and enjoy the rich meats from the same herders, and are warmed by pelts from the same hunters. Newcomers and travellers are known from the way they dress and speak and act, but also by their unfamiliar faces that haven’t been seen at the celebrations and gatherings before, or passed by in the market.

Every scout has worked alongside her at one point or another, in these last few years. They know each other’s habits as well as their own. Knowledge passes through the ranks in hours, and only takes that long because there’s always at least a few members out of the city.

Nawra hadn’t been watching out for prophecies about herself - when she’d have her power discovered by other people, or their reactions to it - being too busy looking for a heads up on the bandits lying in wait, and the storms headed Haspar’s way, and any preventable tragedy. Her warning comes at the last second.

She takes a deep breath and clenches her stretched pale fists in the wolf fur she’s curled up on. Then she takes another, and another, until they finally become something close to steady, slow and almost wheezing as if she’s trying to breathe through water.

The fading stars twinkle at her through the foggy window. The sun is rising and she’s wasting time that is now precious.

Nawra dresses in her usual loose, comfortable trousers, a thick shirt, and her leather bodice on top, buttoned at her ribs. Her sash falls into place only by muscle memory, looped through the belt that she straps her quiver of arrows to. Her hands are shaking as she ties the lace of her necklace at her spine, the knick knacks clacking together like tiny war drums.

Over her shoulder goes her bow and satchel, and overall the only change in her routine is that her bag is heavier today with a purse she doesn’t usually carry. It isn’t raining but her cloak is put within easy reach, all the better for obscuring her face if needed. She heads out the door without a backward glance.

Madsie is waiting in the low light of morning and is soon tacked up and ready. Nawra mounts from the floor and calmly, calmly nudges her into walk. The mare’s ears are flicking this way and that, looking for the danger she can feel her rider reacting to, her legs stiff and jolting as she tries to jog a little, bobbed tail swishing with agitation.

There are oblivious smiles thrown at them as they pass the people they’ve grown up knowing, but she doesn’t catch their eyes. The suspicions haven’t spread yet, but Nawra morbidly wonders how long it’ll take the rumours to reach all of Haspar’s residents, to reach her parents.

If not for the scouts who have heard a little too much strangeness from her, she could go about her days as normal, sleeping separate from others and only revealing foreknowledge that she has a believable excuse to know, her magic overlooked beneath the taboo.

But the scouts have heard it.

Madsie picks up a trot and slips north, away from the road they were meant to take that morning. As soon as they pass the last of the outskirts and the landscape opens up into the steppe, they break into a ground eating canter, Madsie’s hooves kicking up the dust, Nawra standing in her stirrups and crouching low over the dun’s striped neck.

✧

They make it into the mountains as planned. The rough terrain offers a respite from any potential chases, and the abundance of overhangs, twisting alleys, and caves are perfect for being hidden when both resting and whilst on the move. She knows these pathways like the back of her hand.

But so do other scouts. There’s a trade route from the snowy Semtar that criss-crosses the course Nawra is directing Madsie along, taking the extra time to head off the main road as much as the sheer cliffs and drops and danger allow, but in the end it’s a wasted effort.

She sees him before he sees her. His horse is a plain bay that is common in any region, but she recognises the tanned skin of someone not from this far north, and when he raises his head from the papers he’s inspecting she recognises his face too. His blue eyes are sharp and lock onto her, and in turn she doesn’t dare look away either.

Between them is a crossroads where the paths branch in several directions, all as narrow and barely safe as each other. There’s a minute of careful hoofbeats as they approach it, both as falsely casually as they can be when so tense. Messages travel swiftly by bird; he’s almost definitely received the news.

He pockets the papers and map at his side, and Nawra notices his hands drifting carefully back to the quiver set behind his saddle.

He sees her eyes drop to it.

They simultaneously spring into motion: before he can even fumble the long bow from its place to hitch the arrow, Nawra’s heels are digging into Madsie’s ribs with a harsh, “Ya!” The mare is ready for it, warned by her rider’s posture, and her strong, unshod hooves clatter loudly on the hard rocky terrain as she jumps straight into a canter, dashing left and round the first corner to give the archer as little chance to aim as possible.

Nawra can hear the scout following them, his horse greener than Madsie and it showing in their struggle to keep up. The pathways are winding and narrow, both of Nawra’s legs brushing the sheer walls in some places, and none lacking in loose rocks and stones and gravel. There are places where it’s a hard climb and then around the next corner is a treacherous slope down again.

It would be an amusing sight to anyone watching - not even the well practised Madsie can go faster than a chary canter and that’s only on the even stretches, the rest of the time in a choppy trot or more manoeuvring than moving forwards. It’s like a slow motion race except their hearts are pounding double time.

A second too late Nawra realises the man had split off to another path. She knows it - it leads to a dead end but before that it’s higher ground and a good vantage point, and for a pursuer on a slower horse it’s a good chance. There’s nothing she could’ve done but hope, and hoping hadn’t helped.

A handful of dust and pebbles rain down on them from above where the bay’s hooves dislodge the plateau’s edge. Nawra curses under her breath.

As the first arrow hits the floor scant inches from them she throws all caution to the wind and recklessly kicks the dun mare faster, ducking low to the wither to make herself a smaller target and better balanced, and then pushes the mare past her hesitation and down the mountainside. It’s even less stable than it’d looked and loose shingles go flying, Madsie’s hooves sliding right down with them and almost toppling them both. They round an outcrop of boulders in perfect timing and finally haul themselves onto a patch of sturdy ground.

It’s just bad luck that the next arrow hits. It’s probably let loose in anger, aimed in their general direction even though he can’t see past the rocks. It goes right through one golden gaskin and Madsie screams in pain, trying to rear but also take her weight off that hind leg, and it ends with Nawra on the ground and the Jibita stumbling out of reach.

Behind them Nawra can hear the triumphant scout feverishly urging his horse on again, back the way they’d came and doubtlessly looping right round toward her.

She squeezes her eyes shut for a second and prays.

And then she stands, throws her hands up and yells and hollers until the trembling mare bolts lamely away to the south, leaving an obvious trail in the churned up debris that disappears to nothing on the solid rock.

Nawra turns away and slips east.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nawra's fellow scouts discover her developing magic and all is not well.
> 
> Word Count(1634 WC), Horse + Rider(+2), Magic Prompt(+4), Personal Work(+1) = 23EP for Nawra and Madsie


	2. Pyrrhic

_March 28th_

_Three days in and I’m grateful for 2 things: my scouting training that allows me to easily live off the land for weeks at a time, and the guidance from the stars even if it’s what got me into this mess._

_I was told I was a natural scout when I started out. Always the one with the sharpest observations, always first to complete a new route, always steadfast as if there’s a compass right in my head. I’m glad for all of that now as my actual compass and map are tucked away in my bag - attached to Madsie’s saddle, hopefully safe but who knows where._

_By Gods I hope she’s okay. Headed south back toward the steppe, she probably wandered back home… although it’s not a reassuring thought to imagine my parents waking up to a wounded horse with an empty saddle._

_I have a pouch somewhat full of valyut, a small knife in my boot, a cloak to keep myself dry and warm, and a small satchel and waterskin I’m methodically emptying and refilling with creek water and whatever berries and edible roots and fungi I come across. I have my full quiver but my bow broke when I fell off the mare._

_It’s not ideal. I’m waiting for nighttime and then I’ll see what my next plan is._

✧

Nawra spends the first day after splitting from Madsie as silent as a soft breeze. She slinks through the mountains, using every scrap of knowledge and half-remembered hunch of back alleys and shortcuts and longer but safer ways round. All the narrow cracks and gulleys she dismissed as too small for a horse and therefore useless to her are suddenly invaluable. She crawls through caves barely an inch wider than her body. She slides down the steepest slopes and leaps wide gaps that she only half expects to make.

Her hands and knees are scraped raw from climbing the rough rocks, and her shoulders and thighs aching and trembling from the effort. She has to make extra detours now and then to find a gathering of fungi growing in a high cave, or to reach the clear water trickling along the rocks at the bottom of a gorge. All through it she is silent. She survives.

The second day is out of the danger zone, away from the Haspar scouts’ range and safe - of people, at least. The weather is blessedly gentle to her and she prays it stays that way; a freak rainfall filling the valleys and making the rock surfaces shiny and slick could trap her for days. Not having to be so carefully quiet now, she rustles her way through berry bushes and risks losing a knife to catch a hare, which she cooks on a fire as deep in the mountain cover as she can get.

Nawra stops as soon as the sun starts lowering, the darker dusk sky revealing the sparkling galaxy. She settles cross legged on a high plateau and tilts her head back, eyes wide and searching. All night she sits and reads and then lays and dreams.

She isn’t prepared for going north without a horse to ride through waist deep snow or the extra blankets and tent rolled up in her pack. Westwards is months of travel through the unpredictable mountains, and there’s not even a shortcut straight across to circumvent the winding paths around each summit. So she heads south for lack of any other options, buoyed along by the stars, toward the desert that she hates.

On the third day, the ground beneath Nawra’s feet begins to turn gritty. There’s a distinct lack of loose boulders, stones, and debris on the ground now, everything rubbed away to dust and blown to nothing by the badlands’ violent monsoons that howl through the peaks at breakneck speeds. The going gets tougher as the mountains with dangerous but climbable paths become a maze of mounds and gullies, sudden drops of canyons to avoid, and buttes she has to take the scenic route around.

And all the surfaces are weathered smooth, making it near impossible to climb. She winds her way around the peaks, stuck at the bottom of the ravines. Her ankles ache from stumbling along slanted ground, hands blistering from dragging across the stone and catching herself as her boots slide. At one point she locks eyes with a lone dune dog, the scout of the pack. It watches her pass before trotting off, sleek fur glinting.

These badlands really are ethereal in their beauty, with every mesa and spire striped with red, yellows, orange, pinks. But it would be more beautiful from the back of a sturdy footed Jibita.

It’s not too hot this far from the equator in the northern Ethereals, but it’s long stretches barren of shelter and even less food and the sun is relentless. Thankfully she’s well practised at rationing and her skin is naturally brown and rarely burns, but facing the bright sunlight has her headachy from screwing her face up against it. She sleeps heavily at nightfall, propped in a nook between some hoodoos in an effort to be less reachable by anyone or animal that wanders by. She’s almost surprised that she dreams.

And finally - it’s Pegasus again, starry eyes glittering as they gallop across the sky like a pack of raptors are on their tail. Her vision is of hoofprints and hoofbeats, a strong neck beneath her hand and the news she’s been waiting for. She tries to scream Madsie’s name but her mouth won’t open and Pegasus doesn’t look back.

But she wakes knowing she’s a few degrees off course, which is headed straight for Kaetho. The satchel she’d used as a pillow is swung quickly upon her shoulder and she takes a short swig from her dwindling water supply as she starts moving.

Her wounds are negligible in the face of her relief. She doesn’t notice the increase of sand in her socks that rub more sores into her heels, ignores the red streaks she itches onto her skin when it catches in her shirt and tickles.

The crowd of tents on the horizon is the most wonderful sight she’s ever laid her eyes on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> on the run. thank god for astrology magic.
> 
> Word Count(1039 WC), Magic Prompt(+4), Personal Work(+1) = 15EP for Nawra


End file.
